If women want to work in tech, nothing is stopping them. They can learn to program, and write code. This is something that you can teach yourself, you don't need to deal with or rely upon anyone else. It seems that the problem is, at least as described by the New York Times, that women don't want to log the hours, and they want to do something that's more social. That's fine, there is nothing wrong with that. But they may be better off doing something other than writing code if that's the case.

Women log fewer hours in other areas as well. Female doctors see fewer patients than male doctors, and female lawyers are much less likely to make partner because they log far fewer hours than male lawyers. There is nothing wrong with this. Men and women are different. This isn't inherently bad or wrong.

Disclaimer: My staff is 80% female. We received more qualified female applicants than male applicants, so that's who we hired.

As a woman in tech, I've never experienced any hostility, any implication I didn't belong. I was never intimidated by male professors and TAs and lab partners; I saw them as programmers first. I never lacked for role models and heroes because it never occurred to me to ask that they be women. I never had any requirements beyond 'great hacker'.

What I did find frustrating was the obsequious encouragement to stay. Extra scholarships I qualified for. My pick of lab partners. Professional societies just for women. The expectation that enrolling or hiring me would make some bean counter somewhere very happy.

It's frustrating because it leaves me wondering if I'm held to a lower standard. Would my work actually stand out if I weren't a woman? When people tell me I've done a good job, are they silently adding, ". . . for a girl" ? Am I going to get upvotes on this comment just for being a woman, and not necessarily for being insightful?

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of people trying to artificially import women into the field is that sometimes they succeed. There were always women who were there because they got extra attention and extra help. Women who wouldn't shut up about what it was like to be a developer and -- holy crap -- a woman! At the same time! It was, like, worth running a whole blog about!

The more women like that there were running around, the harder I felt I had to work to differentiate myself from them. I don't want to be "second rate, but that's okay because thank God somebody got a woman to stick around." I don't want to be, "wow, that's awesome work and--HEY IT'S A WOMAN, THIS IS FRONT PAGE MATERIAL!" I want to do first rate work and be criticized and compete and fight obscurity right along with everyone else.

There aren't many women in tech. And there are even fewer of them in the really upper echelons. Then again, that's true in general. Whatever the reason, women in tough, competitive fields are rare, and the tougher and more competitive and more elite it gets, the rarer they are. I don't know why that is. Frankly, I don't care. It's not a justification for hamstringing the women who are the exceptions--and no one throughout history has ever said it is. But treating it like a problem just makes problems for people like me.

Seriously, just let people do what they want to do and be who they want to be and stop worrying about why they choose what they choose.

It is great to hear that this is possible. In my area, the only way to ensure that women aren't discriminated in a group is to

1) make the group consist of at least 30%-40% women, or

2) have a women as an authority in the group (presenter, boss, teacher, ...)

Sometimes, even that doesn't help. So although you suffer from positive discrimination, I think it is really great that you don't suffer from any negative dicrimination.

> Whatever the reason, women in tough, competitive fields are rare, and the tougher and more competitive and more elite it gets, the rarer they are. I don't know why that is. Frankly, I don't care.

If I understand you correctly, you don't care because you are part of the elite. But what about the women who are just "average" in tech?

As happens in military strategy, worrying about men out-earning women in the future seems an instance of fighting the last war.

http://blogs.eweek.com/careers/content001/wages/young_women_...

Women outnumber men in the workplace:

http://www.electwomen.com/?p=3123

Women outnumber men in college enrollment:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/fashion/07campus.html

(article about implications on dating)

There are a ton more links on Google for each of these.

Computer science and engineering has inherent research component in it. We do our little own discoveries on daily basis while researching annoying bugs.

For research there is much value in diversity of approaches. That't why some people pity severe lack of women in computer science. They believe that this could increase diversity of approaches and give us better solutions.

Also there is no lack of electricians today but the need for computer scientists is exploding. During the war electricians and other factory workers were needed so there was push for women to take these professions. We don't have a war now but soon development of our civilization might be capped by lack of competent people to program our machines. That would be severe waste of time.

The first programmers (in a certain sense, wiring the first calculation machines in certain ways to achieve certain results) in fact were women, but something badly changed since then.

So the missing women in computer science and programming can't be explained that way. This phenomenon is far more likely to be a problem (and also a shame) of our society. We'll have to work hard to fix it.

However, fixing a problem is only possible if you don't deny it.

You are somewhat misrepresenting what the original job of "programmers" was. The programmer's job was to translate algorithms written in a higher level language (flow charts) into machine code. The people writing flow charts were predominantly men and went by the title "Systems Engineer".

Men were the first programmers, under the modern definition of the term. Women were the first compilers.

The major change since then is that compiling high level code to machine code is now done by a computer program rather than a person. That's not a shame of our society, that's a triumph of computer science.

The systems engineers were doing the job we now associate with programming: turning business/scientific problems into flow charts/other high level representations of algorithms which generate the solution. The programmers were merely doing the work of LabVIEW ( http://www.ni.com/labview/whatsnew/ ) by hand.

Do you consider LabVIEW to be a programmer?

I'm not sure why you're trying to downplay the work these women did, but it's clear from the ENIAC histories and their biographies that they were far, far more than transcriptionists or "compilers". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Holberton

See also this piece, which goes into more detail about the actual work done by programmers: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~nathanen/files/cbi-gender.pdf

edit: sorry - admins, not engineers

It's potentially not a natural phenomenon. To the extent it is unnatural, we should strive to fix it, but most theories behind the discrepancy are conjecture, and when people are blamed for creating an inhospitable environment for others without concrete evidence behind it, nothing constructive will come of it.

I'm curious as to: a) your solution to this and b) whether you intend to implement it to more than just computer science, like say Women's Studies and such.

I'd think it would be really nice to have a 50/50 split of every possible class, especially when women currently make up 57% of grads.

I was taking issue with the assertion that there is no concrete evidence that CS presents an inhospitable environment for women. Yes, it bears more study, but there's clearly an inhospitable environment.

The inference of a particular place being "inhospitable" suggests that there is a large percentage minority at least that is being prevented from engaging in the experience because the current set up forces them to disengage.

I'm not seeing that. And as much as I wouldn't suggest that a class on French Fashion trends not need to over-accommodate the single male that is obsessed with this, I don't see any pressing needs to do this here either.

I suspect if we could find a way to teach kids a little programming in grade school we would to them and society a world of good... but as far as I can tell we haven't yet been able to find a way to teach programming at that level.

I'm not, I'm suggesting that a set-up that prefers those with a natural inclination or enjoyment/ability of a particular field should not be undermined in favour of those with a possible passing fancy.

If the system is detrimental to those with skill/enjoyment/inclination based on a particular set of their shared minority traits, this might be a problem in need of correction.

Unlike French Fashion trends, programming is an important driver of our society,

Whether something is important to our society or not should make no difference in correcting inequities in opportunity.

There's no way of knowing that when most women do not even take an introductory programming course.

The assumption here is that there is a large pool of women waiting to take courses that are being discouraged. I see no evidence of that at all, and that's what I'm questioning.

It's only fine if it's true that women would neither enjoy it nor be good at it.

I'd argue that "programming" in Ada Lovelace's age is more closely related to modern-day science than computer-science. Note also that scientific fields today are in no real shortage of women.

I think the possibility needs to be raised that there's something fundamentally wrong with our field, or at least the people in it - an uncomfortable thought to be sure, but the sheer number of women (growing at that) in every "geeky" field but CS should be an indicator of something.

This reminds me of a conversation I had yesterday...

I'm just going to throw something out there: I know a lot of CS majors, and a lot of science majors. The science majors are a geeky bunch, but are normal, functioning people for the most part. They will just as easily gab all day about some biological principle as they will the latest pop sensation. Their geekiness complements their personality.

Contrast this with the CS majors I know, where their geekiness is their personality. It's almost as if we try too hard to be the stereotype that it is, in the end, all that's left. Not to say all CS majors are like this, but the loudest, most visible ones certainly are, at least where I came from. I know it's a turnoff for me (and I'm a guy), I can't imagine how annoying that'd be for women.

The main social failure that I tend to notice in CS geeks (not all, but some) is complete indifference to other peoples mental states. They don't notice, or don't care, that their conversational partners are not interested in or knowledgeable about what they're saying, they don't seek out a common ground, and they write off any resulting awkwardness as a mere symptom of geek discrimination or (worse) take it as an indication of the stupidity of the other person.

I realize that sometimes this is actually a result of Asperger's, which for whatever reason seems more common in CS than any other field, so I'll always cut a lot of slack to those that have such a disorder. But I also think that a lot of kids that are mentally normal end up getting too deep into the dorking out that tends to happen around computers and lose all interest in social interaction, which is a shame, because it's really rather simple - I know people with Asperger's that have learned to "fake it" well enough to be enthusiastically welcomed in social settings, so people without it have little excuse.

Hobbies are a red herring - you can obsess over Doctor Who, World of Warcraft, or gruesome Internet porn all you want, the issue is whether you can read people well enough to stop talking about them and move on to something else when they are making the conversation less enjoyable for others. For better or worse, most geek hobbies are peculiar to geeks, so when you're around non-geeks, it's usually on you to leave your area of comfort in the name of finding good topics of discussion.

The science majors I've met, and the "science parties" I've been to are full of people of varied interests, just one (or a few) of which are the geeky sort. These are people who are multi-dimensional enough to carry intelligent conversations on topics both inside and outside that of normal geekdom.

Contrast with CS majors (the hardcore ones anyway), and I find that people almost try to be two-dimensional cardboard cutouts of the stereotype. Topics outside of LOTR, Firefly, lolcats memes, etc, are difficult to discuss with anyone.

Again, this is not some way to assign value judgments to hobbies - but rather an observation that for a lot of people in our field that I've met, the "geek stereotype" is all they have. There's no dimensionality to their personality, and it's almost as if there's an active rejection of anything that doesn't fit into the archetype they're trying to project. It's also an observation that, in my experience anyhow, people in scientific fields don't really suffer from this. They're not afraid to do geeky things, nor are they afraid to do un-geeky things. They're just people who like whatever it is they happen to like - which is something I wish our field had enough balls to make happen.

The best hobbies, I think, are the ones where you're creating something, exploring the world, making yourself a better person, or at least getting some exercise. The worst hobbies, I think, are the ones which involve immersing yourself in a narrow stream of entertainment which somebody else has created for you; Star Trek, Firefly, World of Warcraft, LotR, professional baseball. Nothing wrong with any of these in moderation, but when you elevate the consumption of entertainment to the level of a hobby it becomes just plain sad.

(No, writing Firefly fan fiction doesn't make it any better. That may be "creative" but you're still unhealthily immersed in somebody else's narrow world.)

What the hell, man? Writing fiction is inherently creative, and it's a very challenging, rewarding experience -- and it doesn't make a bit of difference whose world you're writing in. Why the scare quotes around creative? Why do you consider immersion in a fictional world unhealthy if-and-only-if it's somebody else's world? In order to write fiction, you're going to have to immerse yourself in an imaginary world, and most of it will be your own creation, even if you're writing fanfiction.

I'm hearing some off-hand disdain for fanfic from you, but it's exactly the opposite of consuming entertainment. If you doubt this, then try writing fanfic sometime. Consider me vexed at your ignorance, sir.

More damning, I think, are the experiences that many women have said discourage them from being programmers, e.g.: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Issues

> However, fixing a problem is only possible if you don't deny it.

Yup. I'm always slightly shocked by how eager HN is to find any explanation for the lack of female programmers that isn't societal.

You need a citation (or several) for this "fact".

Please correct me if I misunderstood the parent posting in that regard.

Funny, I've talked to tons of women about what I do, and not a single one has ever expressed that programming is cool, or interesting -- much less that they regret not having done it.

Look at the success of women in all other "intellectual" professions and you'll see the numbers increasing, not decreasing.

(I don't have the data to back that up - yet - so it's worded vaguely).

Anecdotally, I know several adult women who are learning to program and kicking ass at it.

The design, yes. The writing, yes. But to people I talk to, the code is whatever, the invisible shit that makes it work. They don't care.

So why do you think that is?

It sounds to me like evidence that women don't want those jobs! Which would imply that the jobs that people make a fuss about - e.g. programming and other tech jobs - are ones that a significant portion of women do want, and feel discouraged from.

...I'm joking, and yet I'm not. grin

Sexist jokes are the number one way to drive women out of any group, and they are more common than many people realize.

[...]

Sometimes he tells me that it's okay to make a sexist joke if it's true, or it's funny (funny to whom?). What some people fail to realize is that jokes about gender of any sort almost always make fun of women, and will make most women angry, regardless of the context. It doesn't help to first make a sexist joke about men and then one about women.

[...]

your comments and jokes are driving women away. If that's not what you want, then don't make sexist jokes. If you're not sure if your joke is sexist, find something else to say.

[http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/]

(The title suggests that the article is just about LUGs, but it's really about the whole computer-tech scene.)

Both sexes could make those choices and that's far more important than whether they actually do it.

In French, Italian and Spanish a nurse is some variation on "infermier" coming from the same root as the word for "sickness", and they don't have higher rates of male nurses.

In German it's the truly awesome word "Krankenschwester" meaning something like "sickness sister". Obviously this is gender-specific and has nothing to do with my point, but I just learned it and felt the need to share.

I tried a few other languages in google translate but didn't know them well enough to figure out the etymologies. If anyone knows of non-gender-loaded "nurse" words in other languages it would be interesting to hear them.

I suspect that has something to do with many men avoiding jobs that they think might call their sexual orientation into question. Many men have gone into cosmetology and done quite well. The reasons so few women go into CS has little to do with worries about their perceived orientation. You are comparing apples to oranges.

1) Men's poor choices == men's irrational hangups.

2) Women's poor choices == men's systemic sexism.

Both women and men have the same root for their poor choices: irrational hangups fed by systemic sexism. Both men and women disparage male cosmetologists, and praise females. Both men and women praise male programmers, and disparage females.

I'm making no argument directly, strawman or not.

Both women and men have the same root for their poor choices: irrational hangups fed by systemic sexism. Both men and women disparage male cosmetologists, and praise females. Both men and women praise male programmers, and disparage females.

These statements are presented as fact but are simply not. What is this "systemic sexism" we're agreeing on being present? I see little to support it within the context of this discussion.

All I see is an argument that is essentially:

1) There are few female programmers, 2) The cause is sexism, 3) We must address this.

I take issue with point 3 because point 2 has insufficient evidence to support it.

No you did not. What you did was restate my comment in broader terms, and then attacked your restated version of my comment.

I think I get it now: 1) Men's poor choices == men's irrational hangups. 2) Women's poor choices == men's systemic sexism.

Don't put words in my mouth and then attack me for what you said. It's intellectually dishonest, the definition of a strawman argument, and I want no part of it.

i.e. Many men have an irrational hangup about their perceived sexual status when choosing jobs.

The reasons so few women go into CS has little to do with worries about their perceived orientation.

i.e. There is another issue - inferred - that keeps women out of CS classes.

You are comparing apples and oranges

Exactly what words am I putting in your mouth?

I find it hard to believe there are many men out there who'd really like to be cosmetologists but are afraid of being seen as gay. But if you're out there, feel free to reply!

The article asserts that the recession somehow makes investors stupid and frightened, wherein they think via 'templates' or some archetypal response. I think the word they apply is something more like 'scrutiny' -- at least I sure hope so.

It's 2010 -- let's start focusing on merit. I don't care what letters the woman carries from name-brand institutions. It just might be possible that her business ideas don't attract investment. Has that been considered? How many males from these fine institutions also fail in business? I know the number isn't zero.

>But when she was raising money for Crimson Hexagon, a start-up company she co-founded in 2007, she recalls one venture capitalist telling her that it didn’t matter that she didn’t have business cards, because all they would say was “Mom.”

>Another potential backer invited her for a weekend yachting excursion by showing her a picture of himself on the boat — without clothes. When a third financier discovered that her husband was also a biking enthusiast, she says, he spent more time asking if riding affected her husband’s reproductive capabilities than he did focusing on her business plan.

That sounds pretty, uh, sexist.

So yes, that original paragraph quoted really is bullshit.

Back to the topic:

I don't think it's an issue of just lacking women in the tech industry. We lack men too. When I was going through college, computer science enrollment and matriculation were at all-time lows; it's going to take years to see the full effects of not being able to replace the first major wave of retiring programmers with enough people of high enough quality.

I've had non-programmer coworkers, including managers, call me names like "nerd" and shoot down my ideas without really listening because they assumed I was proposing something "too technical, not practical", and it all really came down to a lack of respect from my coworkers. How can we have people graduating with four-year degrees studying one of the most difficult human endeavors in history entering the workplace in positions that are treated barely better than burger-flipper?

In my mind, the issue is not just women not getting the respect and support they deserve in IT, but everyone not getting the respect and support they deserve. And I think the problem is largely cultural, and in part to blame on programmers themselves. The culture of programmers, especially the idealized startup culture that tries to differentiate itself from standard corporate imagery, is defined by people with the emotional maturity level of children. The pinball-machines-in-the-break-room, jeans-and-snarky-t-shirts environment is conducive to attracting geeks and only geeks. Most people in general don't want to be associated with this environment, there just happens to be slightly more men than women who fall into that minority of SciFi-and-comic-books fanatics.

I have struggled for years to find the level of respect for my work that I feel I deserve, rather than being "just a code monkey." The epiphany for me was to realize that, if I wanted to be treated like a professional, I needed to act like one. I haven't worn a printed t-shirt to work since. Some days I even wear a suit. There's nothing wrong with wearing a suit to work. I even like wearing a suit now, as I realized that I look much better than just jeans-and-t-shirt. Maybe it's just confirmation bias, but I definitely feel like my voice is heard more often and other, "non-technical" coworkers approach me more freely now.

Everyone wants a work environment based on mutual respect. Somehow, slightly more men are just capable of putting up with being treated like crap. This is not in any way a good thing.

I'm sorry that you've found our field to be so inhospitable. That hasn't been my experience at all, though I appreciate your point about making technology hospitable to everyone.

Why are plumbers and programmers alike seen more as a male profession, and cosmetology a female one? There's no evolutionary basis for it - feats of strength and endurance kind of go out of the window when we're all utilizing tools to minimize the job's physical impact. Lawyers certainly aren't reliant on any gender-specific genetic traits to perform their job.

It seems as if most readers here seem to be missing the picture: much of these biases, and they are biases, are entirely cultural, not sex-specific. There is a /cultural/ problem with programming that causes the field to innately repel most potential female programmers.

Saying that there's some things women do and some thing men do, and never the two shall meet, isn't just an obsolete 1950s attitude - it's like a bunch of schoolchildren whining about cooties. Asserting that the field /shouldn't/ try and attract a more diverse workforce has all sorts of nasty underlying implications that I'm sure most of you don't mean. The tech industry isn't and shouldn't be a boys-only club - it should be an industry that prizes intelligence and capability above all other factors, especially gender.

How do you know that? Male and female minds are certainly constructed differently, and appear to be interested in different things. Cosmetology, for instance: most girls and most women are fascinated by makeup, and the opportunities it provides to look marginally prettier. Men care much less... of course men don't wear makeup, but for the most part they don't even care much whether their women do. Just ask any man who has spent twenty minutes waiting for a woman to put on her face, only to find that she looks hardly different when she comes out from the bathroom than she did when she went in. (Protip: don't tell her this).

As for plumbing, well, I don't think anyone is really interested in plumbing, but men are much less deterred by the prospect of getting their hands dirty than women are.

Are these differences cultural? They might be, but there's pretty good reasons to think they're innate. It makes evolutionary sense for women to invest heavily in being good-looking and men to invest heavily in, y'know, accomplishing actual stuff.

You really have no understanding of what housekeeping entailed before the washing machine, dryer, running water, the supermarket, etc. These were fundamentally hard tasks. Women had to get their hands dirty just as much, if not more than men. This historic role of women has disappeared because it is no longer an accomplishment to say "I did the laundry." The idea that a woman's ability to reproduce is a function of looks is a product of the past century, during which society's gender roles have not kept pace with the obsolescence of formerly 'feminine' tasks. All of the tasks once reserved for women due to their difficulty (and possibly innate ability) have become trivial tasks. As such the only thing that influences reproduction is looks.

At least, unless we can start using that wasted human power to, y'know, accomplish actual stuff.

Still, men and women are under greatly different selection pressures. Men place a greater emphasis on appearance when choosing their mates, women place a greater emphasis on power and status.

Perhaps this is because traditionally-female skills are such that there's not a great deal of benefit in being especially good at them. A man gains a small benefit from having as a wife the best basket-weaver in the tribe, but a woman and her children gain a huge benefit from having as a husband the tribe's chief or its best hunter.

1. It's not funny. 2. People actually believe that (even if you don't). 3. That's the problem!

> It makes evolutionary sense for women to invest heavily in being good-looking

It seems like it would only make evolutionary sense if the males noticed the difference.

You say "tools to minimize the job's physical impact", but the reality is that when you're trying to loosen a corroded pipe fitting in a small space with a pipe wrench, you have to apply massive torque to a very small lever in a small space, when a lug nut is frozen beyond the ability of your impact wrench, it's time to get out the breaker bar and put your back into it, when you and your co-worker need to lift the furnace up onto the stand/base you need to lift several hundred pounds.

I've done all of those things, and there's countless times where if I wasn't 6'2" and pretty strong, there's no way I could have accomplished the task.

This is pretty evolutionary and to suggest that it doesn't play a role in the overall representation of the sexes in careers is choosing a conclusion before reviewing all the evidence at hand.

The general theme is, what if women avoid (computer)science because that kind of career sucks?

The question to ask is... why would women want to work 80+ hour workweeks with unpaid overtime - effectively getting a similar salary to a maid (yes I exaggerate a bit!) - they can just go working as maids with less stress.

Lets face it. Most of CS companies ain't no Google or Microsoft. And most of CS people don't stand any chance of gaining access to that kind of company - ever. Most of computer people work for retarded PHB's. Any sane person can see that it's much better to be a PHB than Dilbert.

There are clearly lots of benefits to having women in the tech industury, but if they don't want to program that cuts the number at least in half on that point alone.

A lack of women can still be a problem even if no one in computer science is creating the problem. For a small theoretical basis, let's assume that people are a product of their genes and their upbringing/social context. So, some people are genetically smarter and will grok computer science better on an inherent level. Likewise, some people will have a parent who is a computer programmer or fall in with a nerdy friend group and that social context will get them more familiar with computer science and get them headed in that direction.

The problem can occur if society is telling women that they shouldn't do computer science. Then we're missing out on people who are inherently gifted computer scientists who have been learned from their social context that they should pursue something else. That's a problem. When people put themselves into sub-optimal careers because of what society tells them they should be like, that's bad.

Think about it: what if Einstein had continued just working as a patent clerk? Our world would be worse for it. The inventor of the birth control pill (Gregory Goodwin Pincus) was a Jew born in Russia. His career path would have never happened due to institutional barriers. Heck, Sergey Brin's father saw that his family wouldn't have such advancement there and left for the US because of it - and now we have Google.

But what we're talking about aren't institutional barriers - in fact, I'd say most of us probably welcome women. We would like more women in computer science and are hugely open to it within the computer science community. But greater society is often telling girls (and boys) to pursue certain things from a young age. Girls are potentially being socialized away from computer science. That's a problem. Even without institutional barriers, there can still be social barriers imposed by our society.

And, while I respect jcnnghm's position (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1276946), I have to disagree. The fact that 57% of college graduates are female could point to a problem. If males are being socialized against learning, that's problematic.

The problem is figuring out whether something is inherent or socialized. If something is inherent, fine - life isn't fair or equal. However, socialization matters a lot. Many people overcome socialization. Many others do not. If society has organized itself in such a way that brilliant female potential computer programmers are choosing a different path because they feel it isn't for them, that's a problem. If society has organized itself in such a way that brilliant male potential interior designers are choosing a different path, that's a problem. And our world is socially gendered - we're encouraged to act in certain patterns based on our sex. If society is losing out on brilliant people because they're in positions that aren't their optimal positions due to being socialized not to pursue that position, that's bad for all of us.

Just think if Marie Curie had listened to people telling her "what girls should do" and hadn't pursued physics and chemistry. Then think about all the women who did and the knowledge we all lost out on.

Actually there are features of the CS culture which discourage not only most women but many men from wanting to become programmers. It would be worth fixing these anyway. So guys, go have a shower and find something other than Battlestar Galactica to talk about.

Go away.

I guess what I mean to say is that regardless of what the source of the problem is, the solutions are the same. Battling against problems of socialization is done the same was as fighting against problems of inherent difference.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1273711